CPRE Hampshire PPG 2025 Round Up on Planning

During 2025 our volunteer District Groups planners have spent much of their time responding to consultations on draft Local Plans published by their Local Planning Authorities, we have 13 planning authorities across the county and 2025 has been a very busy year.

What is going on with Local Plans and why are some of them so badly delayed giving rise to speculative development applications?

A number of our Local Planning Authorities have delayed their Local Plans and, in some cases, have had to carry out second Regulation 18 consultations to reflect the changes that the government made in December 2024 to National Planning Policy. Overall, these changes led to an increase, across Hampshire for the annual target of dwellings to be built every year from 8,255 to the current annual target of 12,487n an increase of 51%, for some of our rural areas their targets have nearly doubled. This has meant that Local Authorities now have to find sites for these additional numbers of homes across the plan period, so are looking to allocate additional sites, many of which are in greenfield areas.

Our planning teams have spent time responding to consultations in; Winchester, The New Forrest, The Test Valley, Eastleigh and Havant and will be responding to the repeated consultation for Basingstoke and Dene in the next few weeks.

In addition, our teams have also responded, on your behalf to many individual planning applications, where we have concerns over the impact of proposals on our Hampshire countryside. We have developed relationships with local action groups such as those at Neatham Down and the A31 Alliance which represents all communities along the A31 between Bentley and Ropley, raising awareness as to local proposals for development and providing them with expertise to assist them  in their arguments against what we all agree is inappropriate development proposals.

AS always, we take a special interest in proposals impacting our iconic Hampshire Chalk Streams and the issue of lack of adequate water and wastewater provision is close to our heart for example we are currently objecting to 2 applications in the Test Valley area on this basis. Chilbolton for 75 houses with a poorly supplied existing water supply and a Wastewater treatment works (WWTW) currently at capacity and at Lockerly – with Test and Itchen Association we are responding to an application for 40 houses with no existing WWTW.

We have also lobbied our Hampshire MPs to support amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, in particular to help safeguard our chalk streams and rivers and to reinforce the brownfield first message.

We would like to thank all our planning volunteers for their hard work throughout the year on behalf of you, our members and supporters and on behalf of our Hampshire countryside.